Prof. D. Townsend, Director, A*STAR-NUS Clinical Imaging Research Centre, SG.
The past few decades have witnessed tremendous progress in the development of instrumentation and techniques for medical imaging. From the radiographs and scintigraphy of the 1960s to the modern Computed Tomography (CT), Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET) devices of today, greater and greater detail of the human body has been revealed non-invasively. Imaging is now widely used as an essential adjunct to clinical assessment for diagnosis and staging of human disease, and increasingly in the design of appropriate therapies and then monitoring response to these treatments. However, despite this tremendous progress in the performance of imaging instrumentation, the challenge remains one of early detection and accurate disease staging when a cure is still possible. This presentation will review recent progress in instrumentation for medical imaging and, in particular, the development of new hybrid designs that acquire dual modalities within a single device. Some speculation as to future trends in high performance medical imaging instrumentation will be offered.